


Safe

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Series: Down and Down & Safe [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Drunkenness, F/M, Gen, M/M, references to canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3318569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sam pulled Lee's boots off after he shoved him into the bed, but as he turned to leave, Lee gripped his wrist tight and he froze there, unable to pull away.</i>
</p>
<p>Sequel to "Down and Down."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal many moons ago. I'm simply archiving it here.
> 
> Set roughly between "Crossroads, part one" and "Crossroads, part two," and I'm monkeying with the timeline to allow for several days to elapse between the two parts (basically because I don't want to butt into very important bits of the plot at the end of part two).

Lee Adama might've been a head shorter than he was, but it was by no means easy to move him. He was so much muscle, and he was fighting Sam with every stooping step, trying to talk to him, which he apparently couldn't do unless he could stop and look him very seriously in the face.  
  
Sam really didn't need this shit.  
  
After the night he woke up in Lee's bed, still despondent and newly hung over and a little too aware of how he should have just gone for it, should have simply taken the man (he could have had him)—because the rise and fall of his chest under Sam's hand was enough to make him want to squeeze himself closer, start licking over the warm skin on the back of his neck; after that night, waking up to a pounding headache and Lee looking just as miserable but also so frakkin' pitying, he wanted nothing better than to forget he was actually stupid enough to consider the idea.  
  
The once-mighty Apollo. Lee Adama.   
  
Kara's Lee.   
  
Bad thing was, he thought he was beginning to see what she saw in him, and that made him more than a little nervous and angry and a whole lot of other things that didn’t at all translate into becoming the guy's frakkin' caretaker. He'd just about had it with throwing his arm around a set of tight shoulders and getting nothing whatsoever for his trouble but a whole lot of rambling.  
  
Three nights ago, after that ill-fated one he spent trying to tell himself that, no, he didn't want Lee Adama to frak him into the mattress, he'd happened upon him wasted and annoying the frak out of Racetrack and Athena in the Pilots Rec Room. As soon as Lee saw him, fixing him with his deep blue eyes, he latched onto him for some reason, as if they hadn't spent a long, awkward, and disappointingly chaste night together—or maybe as if they had. So Sam coaxed him into wending his way back to his room, only to listen to him chatter all the way there about—of all things—all the women he'd ever slept with. Except Kara.  
  
Sam pulled Lee's boots off after he shoved him into the bed, but as he turned to leave, Lee gripped his wrist tight and he froze there, unable to pull away. Lee rubbed his thumb over Sam's pulse point in circles, and it all felt distinctly like a sudden ceasing of their generators back on the planet, the whir and hum gone; or maybe like the ship had come to a complete stop there in the void of space, all its power contracted and waiting—there was that much sudden bewildering stillness and confusion inside him.   
  
"She would be proud of you," Lee said softly, eyes closed. "Being a pilot. She would have mocked you to your face, you know, because that was her way, but if you could look at her and see her without her knowing it, when she was looking at you, you would know she was proud."  
  
His face suddenly felt flushed. "Hey…" he mumbled, squirming a little, but not really trying to pull away.   
  
Lee's eyes went wide, as if he only just then became aware of what he was doing. "Oh, gods." He dropped his hand.  
  
"Lee…"  
  
"Just- just get the frak out," he said with a snarl, throwing his arm up over his face.  
  
So Sam left.   
  
Then the next night, when Lee was on the hangar deck, moping against the viper he was no longer allowed to fly, doing damn near the same thing that Sam himself had done as he came unraveled, Seelix had come for Sam. She startled him out of a sound sleep so he could come and fetch Lee, as if he was the one person on the ship—maybe the one person in the whole frakkin' fleet—most capable of dealing with Lee Adama drunk off his ass. Sure, he was strong enough to man-handle him, but as far as communicating with the guy well enough to convince him to do anything…  
  
Lee was quiet as they walked to his room, and that's probably why he found himself following him inside, as if there was no way things could end without calamity. He tended to feel that way about everything anymore, that he was trying to stave off something overwhelming and terrible. He had to keep moving and doing, because the minute he stopped, something might go wrong. Or else he'd be forced to listen to the way the world buzzed around him, like something a lot bigger than him was trying to press its way in.  
  
Sam sat tentatively in the same chair he'd occupied just two evenings before, watching Lee wearily shrug out of his coat and pants. Lee had started to ramble about Kara and her flying almost as soon as he tumbled through the door. It was like someone had turned on a valve inside him, the memories flowing out of him, coming as unstoppably as the grief and pain had since Kara went on that mission she never came back from. But Lee was remembering the countless other times she went out and returned, happily scarred, to tell the tale.   
  
Lee gave him a litany of all the crazy things she'd done, talking to Sam like he knew enough about the mechanics of flying to understand the shop talk, which he didn't. Then he lay back on the bed and suddenly got quiet, still. It was just as disorienting as it had been the night before, maybe moreso because he knew what was coming.  
  
"Gods," he said, "did I hate you."  
  
"I know the feeling."  
  
"I really really don't think you do. Really. I should've hated her, and I did, but I hated you, too. You weren't just… You weren't just a way to hurt me. Of course, that hurt me more." He paused. "I bet you didn't know how she used you. Hell, I bet you don't know how she used me. I'm sure she never even…" He shook his head. "Of course she wouldn't."  
  
Lee's head turned toward his, finally, and his face somehow mocked and pitied the both of them at once: "Did she ever tell you she was frakking me the night before she married you?"  
  
Sam sucked in a breath and held it. It didn't help. He wasn't surprised. He didn't know what he was, but he wasn't surprised. He lurched out of the seat, needing air.  
  
He was halfway out the door when Lee said, "You were safe. Imagine that. You, safe. Sam Anders who wants to put his hands all over me is the safe one. Gods, she really was the craziest bitch, wasn't she?"  
  
Sam had been prepared to simply slink out of the room, hoping to never look Lee in the eyes again if he could help it, but at those words, he stepped back inside. He looked toward the bed, where Lee's arm hung down over the side; Lee's body shook with weary giggles, even when he heard Sam's footsteps approaching again.   
  
With the door still open, Sam forcefully took hold of his shoulders, shoving him down into the mattress.  
  
He hissed, "I don't want to hear you say another godsdamn word about her to me."  
  
Lee didn't say anything; he didn't even struggle against him; so Sam slipped out of the room as though he were indignant about Kara's indiscretions. He was, of course, and it made that hollow feeling open him up inside again, the one he could banish for whole minutes at a time now (mostly only as he learned about her complicated world of flying); but that wasn't what made him curl his hands into fists, made his heart start hammering inside his chest. It wasn't entirely about what Lee had called her, either.  
  
The next night, when Lee's habit began of pausing in the corridor every few feet, to impart apparently important information—like obsolete viper attack formations or Triad strategies of long dead pilots or opinions on Gaius Baltar's hygiene—Lee had seemed so scattered, only half inside his own head. But Sam began to discover that alcohol didn't actually dull Lee's brain much. It's just that he stopping caring at all about censoring what he said.   
  
"What is this?" Lee said as he stumbled along. "Like the fourth day in a row you've been  _sober and responsible_? You're starting to make me nervous." He sounded like a teenager, all attitude and amusement.   
  
"Why?"  
  
"Why?" he repeated in a jovial squeak, then he pulled Sam over toward the wall and stopped them, leaning back against it. He looked at him with seriousness that had to be mocking, but he wasn't sure. "Because…Sam…you're just about as useful as Tigh when you're drunk, and you're drunk just about as often as he is. That's  _why_."  
  
Lee was still holding onto him by the biceps, and he pulled him closer, so close Sam could actually feel his breath ghosting over his neck.   
  
Sam just sighed, for some reason amused more than pissed, and replied wearily, with a smirk, "You're the one making a frakkin' nuisance of yourself wherever you go. Look at you. What the frak are you doing, man? What good are you to anybody right now?"  
  
"What do you care?" he mumbled.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I said," he barked, "what do you care? I don't need you always…looming over me all the time. I don't need Starbuck's frakkin'  _husband_  always right on my ass everywhere I go."  
  
Lee hadn't moved. He didn't seem to see the irony in obstinately holding Sam by the arms.  
  
There was no real venom in it, just impatience, when Sam snapped, "You think I'm having the best time of my life looking after your drunk ass? In case you hadn't noticed, you obviously need somebody to keep you from completely frakking yourself up. Apparently, I'm the only person that'll do it." He paused, exhaling loudly. "Yeah, and it's hard  _not_  to loom over you, you know?"  
  
Lee frowned, then his expression dissolved into a smile. Pushing Sam off him, to propel them down the hallway again, Lee grumbled, "I can still bench more than you can. Don't care how good you were at Pyramid. That's a game for scrawny, wirey types."  
  
"Man, I'm really not scrawny."  
  
Lee's head nodded into a smile. "No."  
  
When he got him home that night, he dumped him into the bed, only to have Lee grab him by the arm again. However, he didn't expect him to tug him down on top of him, so Sam fell heavy, his chest against Lee's. Sam didn't have time to react at first, and when he did, he found that he couldn't. Lee held him there long enough that their breathing came in tandem and long enough to look into his eyes, like he was searching for something.   
  
Then he said, "Do you hate everything? Because I do. Everything. Life."  
  
Lee's words made him so nervous. Everything about the man was vulnerable when he got like this, sometimes suddenly raw and angry and sometimes simply so weary and broken it shook Sam up—because he reacted in two ways at once: repulsed by such emotion but drawn in, too; afraid to let himself sink back into such a misery but at the same time so ready to just let go all over again, be right there in it. With him.  
  
In the end, though, he kept choosing not to go there. It's why he hadn't had a drop of alcohol in five days. It was just too hard. There was no way for a person to live with feelings that dark and consuming. However, something kept pulling him back to it, and if it wasn't Lee, it was at least pushing him toward Lee, pulling him back toward the pain.   
  
"Yeah," Sam replied, finally getting his arms under him to push himself back up. "I do, sometimes."   
  
Before he shifted off the bed, he let his palm graze the side of Lee's face, over stubble he hadn't bothered to shave in a couple of days. Lee's head turned into that touch, and his eyes closed. Sam left him there, and by the time he got into the hallway, he found that his hands were shaking.   
  
He honestly didn't know what he would've done if he'd stayed. He'd had even less clue what to do if he got the call again, if Lee really had begun to spin out and Sam was the one who would either watch him go down or find a way to stop him. He was mortally afraid of being responsible for anybody, because the last time he was…  
  
It didn't mean he would stop trying, even if it killed him, even if it meant coming into the CIC under the scrutiny of a dozen uniforms in order to drag Lee Adama home again. He didn't know why he of all people—a nugget, barely Colonial military—had to be the one to do it, but Tigh had called Helo, who had in turn called Sam.   
  
Tonight, it was serious. Adama had looked close to throwing Lee off Galactica entirely and Dualla wouldn't even look at him. Sam was actually a little flabbergasted that Tigh had picked up the phone rather than knock Lee flat on his back. Apparently, Lee's saving grace had been not saying much, just planting himself in the middle of things and refusing to leave, as if he was still a senior officer and not just a renegade and a glorified paralegal.   
  
The scene was pathetic, and Sam didn't even want to look the younger Adama in the eyes. He found that it was helpful to get irritated about it instead.   
  
"What were you doing in there, man?" Sam hissed as the door shut, depositing them in the corridor where Sam could breathe again.   
  
"Just saying hello," he replied evenly.  
  
He found that he was speaking to Lee like he might have a bratty child: "You can't go in there. You know you quit the military, don't you? You think you're a lawyer now, you know? It's a little too frakkin' late to decide you made a mistake."  
  
"Not a mistake," he mumbled. "Somebody needs to uphold law and order in this fleet. Besides, they hate me already anyway. Everybody hates me."  
  
"Not true. You think you'd still be walking around bothering people with this drunken bullshit if they didn't understand you're going through a rough time right now?"  
  
"Rough?" He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's a word for it." Then he said, "So are you."  
  
"What?"  
  
Lee stopped them, then, leaned back against the wall without touching him, and Sam came to a halt in front of him.   
  
Lee said, "Don't pretend…that you're perfectly fine. Don't act like you don't want to die sometimes… from the way it…squeezes your heart until you want to rip it out. Why are you being so...?"   
  
"This." He gestured between them. "Somebody's got to do this. Make sure you don't do anything stupid."  
  
"Too late," he said. "Too many stupid things. My life is… It's all useless."  
  
"Oh, shut up. Just shut the frak up. I get so tired of listening to this self-pity garbage. I've got better things to do."  
  
He really did, mainly sleep. As a nugget, he was worn out and worn down in a way he hadn't been since Caprica. Then there were the demons that weren't as easily identifiable as a pain in the back or a headache from squinting at the console, even if they were physical enough to weigh him down, make him ache. Of course, that was only if he let himself dwell on them. So he didn't. So instead he worried about Lee. He could see that now. He'd left the bottle behind, and with it that the constant throb of pain from Kara being gone, but it was always still there, coiled up in an unavoidable tension inside him, and if being around Lee meant a diversion from it, being around Lee also meant keeping his finger firmly on the pulse of it, the overwhelming hurt that lay just beneath the surface, as vaguely and as palpably threatening as the music he was sure he heard coming out of the walls.  
  
Lee's face scrunched up. "Who asked you! Leave me the frak alone, then." Suddenly, the blindly quarrelsome look vanished from his face, to be replaced with a nasty, mischievous sneer. "I mean, if I'm keeping you from tanking up and banging the first willing warm body you can get your hands on…"  
  
"You don't know me," he said firmly. "Don't pretend you do."  
  
"I know exactly what you are. Think viper pilots are different from Pyramid jocks? I think it's a miracle you never cheated on her."  
  
"How do you know I didn't?"  
  
"Because you didn't. Because you want to  _right now_ , and you're  _still_  not because it's  _me_  and it was  _her_  and somehow it  _still_  matters to you that she wanted me, and you think you  _can't_  and you think you shouldn't  _want_  to frak around with me but you  _do_." His voice rose. "And I wish you'd just decide one way or the other, because I'm getting  _sick and frakkin' tired_  of looking at your  _frakkin' face_  and having you be  _nice_  to me like this is about grief or Kara or something else besides you wanting to get in my pants."  
  
Something cracked inside him—resolve, or patience. Willpower.   
  
"That's it," he said. "I'm so done with this."  
  
Lee snorted. "Good. Don't need somebody like you feeling responsible for me. You're not even responsible for yourself, you pathetic asshole." Lee pushed himself off the wall and stood close enough to touch him, but he didn't. He didn't have to. He simply looked up at him, eyes hard and knowing. "You're desperate and reckless and stupid." His voice suddenly sounded all too much like Kara's when it inflated to drunken mocking: "And you're crazy if you think  _that's_ gonna make you a stellar frakkin'  _raptor_  pilot. Wouldn't even make you a mediocre frakkin' deckhand, you useless frak-up."  
  
"You're just rambling now. That's pitiful, man."  
  
"Okay. Whatever. Then why don't you just leave me the hell alone."  
  
"Suits me."   
  
Sam walked away, then, not caring in the slightest if his crazy ass fell down in the middle of the corridor. Let somebody else take care of the wayward Adama and his big sincere blue eyes and his guilt guilt guilt that pounds into a person's brain. Hell, let them banish him from the ship so Sam never had to look at him again.  
  
Sam tossed the words over his shoulder, mustering as much condescension as he could: "You are so absolutely frakked up, man."   
  
"Is that so?" Lee retorted. "That why you want me,  _Anders_? Can you only get it up for frakked up messes?"  
  
He was stupid enough to turn around and lock eyes with him, and he saw in them all sorts of things he never wanted to see, some of them about himself.  
  
Sam didn't have to punch him to knock him down, but he did anyway, striding over and putting his fist to his face—in the general vicinity of his eye, but the placement wasn't so much the point. He meant for it to hurt like hell. It hurt his hand, too, but he was equally glad for that.   
  
As the adrenaline subsided, he looked down at Lee's passed-out form, crumpled into a heap against the wall, and he sighed. He was suddenly so tired, but behind that exhaustion was a twisting in his stomach. So he went down the corridor and hauled Hot Dog out of his rack, and together they carried Lee all the way back to his room and deposited him in bed. Sam left him just like he was, military coat and shoes on. He would be dammed if he did more than that. But then he found himself ushering Hot Dog out, promising to stay with the former Commander until he came to.   
  
He sat down beside the table where the bottle waited, still unstoppered, and he didn't have the sense or the heart to get up. He thought he would only drink a little. Just enough to calm down. He couldn't deal with this push and pull with Lee, since not matter what he did it felt so damn destructive. He honestly didn't know what he was doing anymore, if it was about Kara or Lee or himself. But he couldn't take his eyes off Lee's unshaven jaw, the hard line of it that showed tension the same way Kara's often had, even as she slept. She had always been his at night, still fighting her demons but somehow surrendering in his arms, because there she felt safe.  
  
Safe. It made him snort, then he couldn't stop laughing or pouring. Too many bad things happened to her after she met him. Being with him should have been good for her; he thought he knew her and had tenacity enough to love her. He should have been able to do it. After all, of the two of them, he was supposed to be the stable one, wasn't he? Dependable Sam, patience enough for half a dozen people, always waiting for her to figure out what she wanted.   
  
He was the master at waiting and always being ready. After months of ducking the Cylons, he'd learned to think on his feet, improvise and deal with anything, even things he thought he couldn't bear. Or he'd always assumed it was living with the threat of the Cylons; maybe it was just being Kara Thrace's husband, making the decision every day to live in the moment, ready for anything, not thinking about distractions like the horde of ghosts swarming just outside your life—mothers and lovers and self-loathing and Lee frakkin' Adama, making love to the woman who was half your heart and having the gall to act like he was guilty about it. She wasn't. If she wasn't, why should Lee be? Hell, why shouldn't Sam have just stepped aside and let them have each other?  
  
Because he needed her, plain and simple. And she was gone. Lee was just about all he had left of whatever spirit had been inside her, but it was just a shadow of it, because Lee was Lee. Lee was a whole different kind of frakked up. Lee was the kind of man who defended Gaius Baltar just because he was that damn sincere about shit. It was an impulse—honor—that he strove for himself sometimes, where it was practical, an impulse that impressed him in Tyrol or Helo; but in Lee, it made him vaguely furious. That was probably because it was half of why he wouldn't let himself touch him: he knew whatever happened between them would frak up Lee a lot more than it would him.  
  
Sam was very nearly drunk when Lee finally stirred. He opened his eyes, throwing his arm up over his face to block out the lamp light.   
  
"You're still here."   
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You punched me."  
  
"You deserved it."  
  
"What the hell's wrong with you?"  
  
"I don't know. But I'm not her. You can't keep taking all your shit with her out on me."  
  
"Whatever."  
  
"And you're not her either."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You are not Kara. I know that. Don't think for a minute that I'm stupid enough to believe you're some frakkin' substitute for her. I might be here because she would want me to be, because that's the way she expected me to be, but I'm not here because I'm dumb enough to think frakking you would help anything."  
  
"So you admit it?"   
  
"Admit what?" Sam said, throwing his hands up in the air. "That I'm more than a little hard up for you? That I can't stand to be in anybody's company besides yours right now, not even my own, as frakked up as that sounds? Yeah. Sure. But I'm not about to throw myself at you or anything, so don't…frown at me like that. And, for frak's sake, don't scream your head off in the corridors about it, man."  
  
After a long pause, Lee said, "I don’t know what you expect me to do."  
  
"I don't know, either."  
  
"I've never frakked around with a guy before."  
  
"No kidding," Sam muttered sardonically.  
  
His voice was softer: "That doesn't mean I wouldn't. With you."  
  
He sounded wounded already, regretful but too desperate to stop himself. So Sam took a deep breath, meeting Lee's eyes only for a moment before he stood up, lightheaded and soul-sick, and retreated to the door.  
  
He heard the rustle of the blankets on the bed and the squeak of the springs, and he knew exactly what was happening, and he didn't even try to get away, duck out the door, before it did. When Lee stumbled into him, slipping his arms around his waist and shoving him forward, clumsily, Sam reached out his hands to steady himself against the inside of the door. He was holding up his own weight and Lee's all at once, and a pair of hands curled anxious fingers into his stomach as his forehead came to rest against his back. He was suddenly dizzy, and he knew it was only partly about the alcohol.  
  
"I don't know what we're doing," Lee said.  
  
"That makes two of us."  
  
Lee laughed bitterly, then he got quiet again, that spooky quiet that meant he was gathering up words that were hard to say and hear.   
  
He said, "You know, I told them to call you. I told them, 'Sam Anders.'"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You understand."  
  
He couldn't breathe, not with Lee's hands sinking into his gut like that, like they were ready to feel every emotion he had, every response. It was bad enough Lee knew all the things he knew.   
  
He held his diaphragm tight, even when he spoke: "This- this is all about…her?"  
  
"No," Lee said, and his hands suddenly came unclenched until they were flat, stroking his stomach in a way that should have been soothing, except he could feel his own heart and Lee's beating in counterpoint together against the back of his ribcage, so wild even if everything else about them was still so reigned in. A breath shuddered out of Sam's lungs.  
  
"No," Lee repeated. "Not all."  
  
When Sam turned, he found himself pushing Lee back toward the bed, shoving him onto the mattress and climbing up over him, already pressing himself down into hard thighs, his hands on the warm skin of Lee's neck, stroking, as his hips ground against Lee's and he felt him grow insistently hard, despite the alcohol. His own cock seemed to have no problem dealing with the bootleg ambrosia, either.  
  
For a moment, he was lost in the rhythm of it, the way his arms steadied him for the movement of his hips, but then he felt Lee's hands come up under his shirt, trying to push it up and off, so he sat back and shrugged it over his shoulders and onto the floor. That's when he felt Lee's hands take hold of his hips and pull him tighter against him.   
  
Lee's whole body seemed to arch up into his, and Sam couldn't take his eyes off the expanse of his neck, his parted lips as he exhaled soundless moans. So Sam stretched out over him and attacked that stubble-covered neck with his mouth. His lips sucked in hot, rough skin, teeth scraping over it, like if Sam could taste him enough or make him cry out, he might understand him. Because this—this was something he knew how to do, especially if it was crazy and stupid.   
  
"Frak," Lee gasped. "Please. Gods, Sam."  
  
"Tell me to stop."  
  
"I don't want you to stop."  
  
"Tell me to stop. Tell me or I'm gonna—"  
  
"Don't be--  _Gods_ \-- Don't be an idiot. I want-- I—" With a growl, he said, "Frak."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Sam. Want- want you inside me."  
  
"You've never—"  
  
"I  _know_  that. Look, do you or don't you—"  
  
Sam bit down on his neck again, just where it joined his collarbone. It was like he could feel every muscle in Lee's body, every ounce of tension inside him, and it was his own tension, too, the kind he'd been carrying for days. When Sam started to suck at the skin between his teeth, Lee's fingers stabbed into his hipbone and he cried out loudly enough it startled him.  
  
Sam's torso jerked up as he struggled to get his breath again. But he was still rolling his hips against Lee's, feeling him through two layers of fabric, hard against his own hardness.  
  
Sam clamped his mouth down around the words: "You know I want this, but I'm not—"  
  
"Honestly," Lee started, his head straining up, as if those extra centimeters could make Sam better understand him, as if he didn't already see everything there was to see in those eyes. "Honestly, do you think either of us could get more frakked up than we are now?"  
  
It was the kind of thing that sounded so reasonable it had to be true, but it wasn't. Things _could_  get worse. Probably Lee even knew that. But Sam was simply too tired to fight it anymore. And, hell, maybe it would just level out the hurt rather than make it deeper. Maybe without Kara between them…  
  
He dropped his head, surrendering.   
  
"Moisturizer," he said, his voice scratching out, tentative. "I'll need some moisturizing lotion or something."  
  
"Medicine cabinet."  
  
"Get undressed." And he turned his back as he climbed off him and off the bed.  
  
When he returned, his hands shaking, and tossed him the bottle, he didn't take his eyes off him as he shucked off his own pants and shorts. Lee sure as hell looked just as good naked as he'd imagined, maybe even better, lying there eyeing his own body with interest as he stepped out of his clothes.   
  
Sam climbed back onto the bed, now planting himself between Lee's legs. "You sure about this?"  
  
Lee's jaw clenched and unclenched. "No. But I can't keep doing this. I need… Frak, I don't even know. Just do it. Please."  
  
"The only thing you absolutely have to do—now listen to me—you have to loosen up. Find a way to get calm. Freak out and this will not work. Can you handle that?"  
  
Lee nodded, eyes searching, then he suddenly raised up enough to get his hand around the back of Sam's neck so he could pull him close and crush their mouths together, his tongue flicking inside, probing and tasting and rendering Sam just about incapable of thinking about anything but getting him worked open and fast. He had no idea how he was going to frak him without hurting him, but he would damn sure try. Right about now, he'd do anything for a man with lips this hungry but somehow still careful; hesitant but taking. Lost.  
  
His fist closed around Lee's cock first, giving it a few experimental tugs, and he felt him groan into his mouth even as his hand on his neck pulled him deeper into the kiss. But after a few moments, he was startled (even though it was his goal) to find Lee's body relaxing a little, like he was letting go and letting Sam lead, even though he kept a firm grip on the back of his head.  
  
When he began to probe at his asshole, Lee shivered a little, but he didn't fight him, so Sam stopped and pulled back long enough to squirt out some of the lotion on his fingers. Swiftly enough Lee wouldn't have time to clench up again, all at once he licked his way back into Lee's mouth and probed his finger inside him, quick and pushing until Lee groaned and forced himself to open up and take it.   
  
Sam pulled out of the kiss briefly. "Good. Good, like that. I'm not gonna hurt you. You all right?"  
  
"Yeah," he huffed.   
  
"It gets easier."  
  
Before Lee could say anything else, he closed his mouth over his again and began to open him with his fingers, even if he sometimes seemed to have to go back to square one getting him to relax.   
  
"Gods, Lee," he murmured. He nibbled over his jaw and felt him moan just a little. Then he faltered, not knowing what in the hell he could even possibly say that would make any difference. Lee didn't want to hear him talk, anyway. So he started his lips on a path down Lee's neck and over his chest, pausing for a moment at his navel, just to let his tongue trace its way around it, before he took his cock in his mouth. He felt every muscle in Lee's body jerk, but soon Lee was melting into the mattress, small grunting moans escaping his lips.   
  
Sam's fingers slid so easily now that he knew he could try getting inside, but he realized that wasn't at all what he was aiming for. He liked Lee like this, squirming underneath him. He liked how smooth and salty the head of his cock was in his mouth, and he liked the way Lee's hips shifted closer to his face. He probed at his slit once before he swallowed him down as far as he could take him, and Lee's deep groan told him this was what he was really aiming at, to make him fall apart before he even tried to take him.  
  
"Frak," Lee groaned. "Gods. Need—yeah— So good, so— You're— Gods, Sam. Just like- like that. Please. Frak, please."  
  
He was this close to shoving his legs open farther and just pressing into him, but he made himself hold back. Lee was so close he could hear it in the tone of his voice, feel it in the strain of all those muscles pushing his hips up into his mouth. For a moment, he withdrew his fingers and let that hand close over Lee's balls, just to give them a gentle squeeze, and at the same time, he drew his lips back to the head of his cock, flicking his tongue against it, licking and tasting, listening to him moan. Then he took him deep again and sucked harder. When Lee came with a shudder and a groan, Sam swallowed it all down, all that bitter salt taste of him.   
  
Lee eventually pushed his head back, too sensitive to bear it anymore, and Sam prodded him into turning facedown on the mattress. He made himself breathe deep as he slicked himself up, reminded himself not to be too rough.   
  
"I'll go slow," he said soothingly. "It hurts, you tell me." He had a feeling, though, that Lee would do nothing of the sort.   
  
Even though he pushed inside in stages, small movements as he waited for more and more of him to open up, he could see Lee's shoulders tighten, hear his breathing hitch. When he was finally inside as far as he was willing to go, he paused—collecting himself again, waiting for Lee to adjust.   
  
Lee's back arched a little, hips rolling tentatively toward his. His face was turned, so Sam could see that his eyes were open, fixed on the wall, his lips parted as he murmured, voice raw: "It's all right. Do it."  
  
At first, Lee lay there, just trying to find a way to take it, but eventually, he began to move with him, back against him, and he made these soft noises each time Sam slipped out. By the time those noises turned to open-mouthed gasps that sounded as much like pleasure as discomfort, Sam was gasping, too, trying and failing at not thrusting too hard. It was frakkin' impossible, Lee's body swaying toward his, legs fluttering open, that tight heat clenched around him, so close he could feel the pulse of his heart as he drove into him over and over. The man was so beautiful and strong, and he felt so frakking perfect.   
  
Without much warning, Sam was coming hard, his body freezing with it, arching into it, his eyes open, tracing the length of Lee's spine—curved with movement, a steady line from his sweat-damp neck down through his lower back. He could almost feel that line curve right up and into his body where they joined. It was too much. The dizziness returned to him in waves along with the blood rushing back out to the rest of his body, along with a lot of adrenaline he had thought he'd already burned through several times over that day.  
  
He pulled out gingerly and sat back, propped himself up on the far end of the bed, feeling like he was on the verge of a panic as a pounding began in his brain. He waited for Lee to turn over, which he did, eventually, his legs tangled in the disarranged blankets.  
  
Lee stared at him, although what sort of stare it was he couldn't say. Stranger? Friend? Lover? Enemy? All those things at once. No, not stranger. It was a knowing look, but one just shy of understanding.  
  
Sam said, "You okay?"  
  
"Yeah." He smiled weakly. "Still drunk."  
  
"Me too, I think."  
  
"I thought you had maybe been…"  
  
"Yeah," he said, sighing.  
  
Lee just nodded, then he closed his eyes. "I don't… I'm not asking you to stay. I know you're getting pretty frakkin' sick of me."  
  
Sam just snorted out a breath.  
  
Lee continued, half a smile on his lips, "But I can't sleep at night. You know that. It's why I drink. I haven't slept more than two hours together since…the other night."  
  
Sam didn't know how to react to that, or what it made him feel. Nervously, he said, "You're not gonna freak out on me, are you?"  
  
"No," he said with a sardonic laugh. "I think we're probably a little past me having a panic over all this."  
  
"Whatever this is."  
  
"Yeah. Whatever it is. Do you know?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"She'd be pissed."  
  
"Maybe. Hell, maybe she'd want to frakkin' join in. Sometimes I feel like I didn't even know her, you know?"  
  
Lee simply nodded, holding his gaze for a long moment. Then he sighed as he leaned over and pulled his shorts off the floor and struggled back into them. Sam did the same, but the two of them went right back to their places, Lee lying on his back in the center of the bed, Sam sitting at his feet, propped up against the wall.   
  
Lee said, "She wouldn't have married you if she didn't think you were capable of dealing with her."  
  
"But you said—"  
  
"Frak what I said. I'm not talking about reactions, I'm talking about reasons. She…connected to you. She trusted you, and I think I'm starting to see why. You have got to be one of the most stubborn people I know. And, gods, do I know plenty."  
  
"Not stubborn enough, apparently."  
  
"No. Just enough, just the right kind. You know exactly how far to push."  
  
"A lot of good that does me. I pushed her right to you."  
  
"I wasn't just talking about her."   
  
Lee let the silence hang for a moment when Sam didn't answer, then he said, "Sam, why are you here?"  
  
"I told you I don't know. Don't ask me how much of it has to do with her and how much of it's about…you. But I meant it before. You're not her." He smiled and said warmly, "She wasn't as much trouble to get into bed. Drunk or otherwise."   
  
Thankfully, Lee chuckled at that, knowing how he meant it. But then things got quiet in the room, quiet enough he thought he heard that faint, maddening music again.  
  
Sam eyed the bottle on the table, but instead, he stretched out his legs. "Do you want me to stay?"  
  
"I want things to make sense again."  
  
"That's not an answer."  
  
Lee sighed. "You're just as frakked up as I am. We might as well be here together." He offered a faint smile: "Keep us out of trouble, anyway.  
  
So Sam stretched himself out on the bed beside him. They didn't touch except where their hips came to rest together. Sam could feel the need and desperation coming back, coursing through him like waves, but he could also feel how something in Lee was quieted if not calmed, so he was determined to lie there, still, and settle down enough to sleep, to let Lee be.   
  
He found, though, that it was impossible to get his mind to quiet itself. His body buzzed with relief and ache together, the need to touch him even greater than it was before. He'd been wrong: this had frakked him up, too. He could only hope it was worth it, like he hoped Lee's wallowing in misery these past few days was helping burn something out of him, painfully but surely. Lee pulled that grief closer and closer until he could look it in the face, let it pull him under. Sam could understand the impulse, but he just couldn't frakkin' do that anymore. Just a taste of it was all he could bear now.  
  
Sam lay on his back, listening to Lee's shallow breathing. He thought he'd left the bottle open on the table, because he could smell it, or maybe he was simply smelling it on Lee. Lee probably still tasted like it, too. But on his lips, it was still nothing at all like oblivion.


End file.
